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And then he was gone. Swallowed up by the darkness as he stepped past a thin line of trees separating two apartment buildings.
Sean and I got along reasonably well working together for the last four years, but he was a freaking moron to show up at my house in the middle of the night and give me a drive with nothing but cryptic words about how it might ruin the company. Then tell me I had to keep it safe. Dude watched too much television.
Men.
I didn’t even know what the small device held, considering All American Bank encrypted all their data. Everything from employee files to customer information. You needed the special password from the person who created it or access to their computer.
And newsflash, Sean hadn’t given me either of those pieces of the puzzle.
Now as I entered the big imposing building, the thumb drive burned a hole in my pocket, and I swear I heard my clock ticking away the seconds. The longer I held on to the information, the more my life drew closer to its end.
I had no time to waste.
I pushed through the glass door, letting myself into the building’s lobby. The small town I landed in was only a two-hour drive from Bangor, where I fled from earlier that morning, but the deserted streets and the overcast sky seemed ominous.
“Hello?” I called out to the empty first floor of the building.
Not a single soul. Not a chair, not a desk, not even a fake plant.
Great.
Not spooky at all.
Nope.
Totally fine.
I was so going to die.
My heart kicked up beating again as I spun in a circle looking for anyone while expecting a gunshot. It was just me and four walls of glass, so they had an easy target.
Was this a trap? Had my contact, the one person I counted on to get me out of this mess, led me astray?
A small sliver of sunshine broke through the clouds outside and scattered rainbows danced on the floors. Neither did anything to lighten my mood. If I was going to die in this monstrosity of a building, I wished they’d just get on with it. A bank of elevators sat in the middle of the first-floor space, and I walked to them, hitting the up arrow. The doors opened immediately.
Like it was waiting for me.
Totally not scary.
Nope. Not at all.
With one foot into the space and one foot out, I looked back to double check no one followed me. The lobby was still empty. I needed to do this. It was a long shot, but long shots were all I had left.
I probably shouldn’t have brought the thumb drive with me, but I hoped to meet with TerminalChaos, tell him my story, chuck the thumb drive at him, and then leave. Problem solved. No one needed to know I’d even been here. Easy peasy.
And I wouldn’t end up like Sean.
Dead.
I pressed the button for the fourth floor and the elevator started with a squeak. Plastic covered the glassy metal-colored walls as if the elevator wasn’t ready for service yet. Hopefully that meant it wouldn’t crash and drop me to my doom before I passed on the information.
I tried to take calming breaths as I placed my hands on my knees and lowered my head to stop the nauseating feelings. But the ninety-nine-cent meditation app I downloaded on my phone didn’t prepare me for my current life-or-death experience. Frankly, I remained as calm as anyone should have expected. The fact I wasn’t lying on the floor crying my eyes out meant I deserved a damn award.
“Fucking Sean,” I whispered, seeing his face when I closed my eyes. I refused to end up dead like him.
Shot outside of his home. A place I’d never visited, but the news crew reporting on his case identified the scene. A cute two-story home in the suburbs of Bangor. Suburb people didn’t get shot in their driveways. They had heart attacks while mowing the lawn or shoveling snow.
You didn’t just shoot a middle manager at a bank outside their suburbia home.
